I swim down at the Mansion House almost every day, and in order to get out of the pool, I have to climb up three metal steps on a metal ladder. It’s very hard for me to navigate. I have to hoist myself up (hoist being the operative word) step by step. And I go very slowly. I can do it, but it’s tedious, and I must look to the casual observer like they’re watching an ancient marathon runner at the last half-mile.
And there are often casual observers. They are sitting in the hot tub. I see them; four young girls, or two young guys, or a family with little kids. And if I can see them, that means they can see me working hard just to emerge from the pool. You have no idea how many times I have wanted to say, ‘Look, I’m 83. It’s amazing enough that I’m here. Give me credit. Don’t judge me that I can barely make it outta here.’
The fact is they probably aren’t looking. They could care less. But it feels as if they are. I read a study once about how few people are actually thinking about you, or looking at you, or caring about you. So “get over yourself” was basically the message. That helps, along with that wise but not-so-original saying, “What other people think of me is none of my business.”
But still I am crawling (crawling being the operative word) out of the pool, and feeling looked at, and wanting them to know how hard things get physically when you reach a certain age. If they think I’m 60, and wondering why getting up that ladder is so difficult, I want to announce that I’m not 63, I’m 83, and the last thing I’d want is for them to say something like, “Are you all right?” Or, “Hello, can I help you?”
So I’m actually not 83. I’m 83 and a half. (Don’t you think it’s funny that the only people who count halves in their ages are little kids and old people?) Anyway, this is the year my age really hit me. It’s been gradual, but it reached a new level of hard this past year. Now that I think of it, I might have said this last year. And the year before that. So who am I kidding?
I used to hear the phrase “Aging isn’t for sissies,” and I hated it. I hated it because I wasn’t old yet, and I didn’t like the whole sissy thing. I still don’t like it. But aging is better than the alternative. That saying is not original either.
But speaking of original, now we’ve come to the gold side of getting old. You get to go back to your original self, the one who came here flawless, perfect, before you went into (as Ram Dass calls it) “somebody training”. The “you” just before your parents looked into the bassinet and said “I’ll love you if you play the flute,” “I’ll love you if you go to Harvard,” “I need you to be a lawyer.” That you.
Lots of women over 50 who take the workshop write about the liberation of finally not caring what they look like, about what people think of them. It’s a gift that I get to see the joy and the light in their eyes, free from those old opinions and constrictions. But as much as I’d like to believe all that had disappeared for me, I still have lingering shreds of the “what must people think of me?”
At least I don’t suck in my stomach anymore when on my way to the ladies’ loo, as I pass a table of guys. At least I don’t put my eye makeup on before I go into Cronig’s. And I definitely don’t dress to impress someone important I might meet who might invite me to a fancy brunch.
I got one of those karmuppances the other day. I came out of the club and I looked in the car mirror. My hair had the drowned rat look, my tan is totally gone, and has given way to a pale, pasty punim (that’s Yiddish; you’ll have to look it up), and my wrinkles, which when brown I think look beautiful, now look, well, just ucchh.
So just to illustrate how the universe will provide if you let it, the fortune cookie that I got from Mikado two weeks ago was sitting there beckoning. And since I was hungry, I broke in. First I ate. Then I read “A pretty face will fade, but the soul will always keep its beauty.” My soul smiled all the way back to Chilmark.
